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People often assume that MartinLogan was founded by a couple of guys named Martin and Logan, which is sort of true: Gayle Martin Sanders and Ron Logan Sutherland. MartinLogan “just sounded better than SandersSutherland,” Sanders explains. (Apparently they never considered GayleRon.) The two met in the late ’70s at a high-end audio store Sanders managed in Lawrence, Kansas. Despite very different backgrounds—Sanders had trained in architecture and advertising, Sutherland in electrical engineering—they shared a passion for music and, they soon discovered, electrostatic loudspeakers.
For anyone seeking the ultimate in sonic purity and clarity, electrostatics held enormous appeal. Unfortunately, designing and building one that will also produce the sound levels and bass extension most people expect from a loudspeaker is a formidable challenge, even today. Back then, only a relative handful of electrostatic speakers had ever been brought to market. Although most were failures, a few, such as the KLH Model 9 and Quad ESL, were legendary among audio enthusiasts.
The KLH probably came closer than any other full-range electrostatic speaker of its day to competing effectively with conventional speakers in bass and output capability. It was very big, however, and finicky and expensive, and it didn’t fit in at all with the rest of KLH’s line. Consequently, sales were modest, and eventually the Model 9 went out of production. The Quad ESL was much more successful, especially in its native England, and until MartinLogan’s products came on the scene it was arguably the only commercially significant electrostatic loudspeaker in history. It suffered the classic limitations of the breed, however. Though the original Quad electrostatic was widely regarded as the world’s finest reproducer of chamber music, fans of rock and even symphonic music were inclined to look elsewhere.
Sanders and Sutherland convinced each other they could do better. They were sure they could build an electrostatic speaker that would produce adequate bass, output, and sound dispersion without arcing, blowing up amplifiers, or otherwise offending people not interested in a living-room science project. Sanders organized a small research and development team to transform an original design he had tinkered with for more than a decade into a practical, marketable electrostatic transducer.
The first prototype was ready in 1980. Naturally, it still had that science-project quality—a flat aluminum panel sprouting wires, struts, transformers, and power supplies, connected to an amplifier in Sanders’ living room. It sounded even better than expected, but when they turned up the volume, a lightning storm erupted across the panel and music was replaced by a plume of smoke drifting toward the ceiling. Still, they knew they were close.
The team began a series of experiments with new aerospace materials that led to a design breakthrough. Constructed with state-of-the-art conductive coatings, insulation, and adhesives, their revised transducer sandwiched a clear, ultra-light Mylar diaphragm between two perforated-steel stators.
The new speaker looked elegant and could play loudly without arcing, but Sanders still struggled with how to achieve satisfactory high-frequency dispersion without compromising sound quality. (Large transducers tend to radiate high frequencies in a narrow beam rather than fanning them over a wide area.) The solution came in a midnight session when Sutherland sketched a theoretical sound wave to illustrate how sound disperses. Sanders envisioned a horizontally curved panel, the curvilinear line-source, or CLS, transducer central to the design of every MartinLogan electrostat since. With only a mock-up and some photographs, Sanders and Sutherland exhibited their speaker concept at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. An instant hit, the design was honoured with a CES Design and Engineering Award. Excited by the response, they headed home to Kansas to translate their ideas into a working prototype.
2023 marks the reimagining of the popular Motion Series speakers. With a bold new look and a suite of new audio upgrades, the Motion® series is ready to impress. Completely redesigned from the inside out, this is our best sounding Motion® series ever. What does “best” mean? For MartinLogan it means that through a rigorous development process involving anechoic chamber measurements, blind listening tests, and in room measurements they’ve crafted a more refined sound for Motion® than ever before that is distinctly MartinLogan.
Today, MartinLogan continues in the tradition of its innovative founders, with hands-on design and engineering, and proprietary manufacturing techniques. Constant improvements on the vanguard of electrostatic and thin film transducer technology keep MartinLogan on the cutting edge of audio innovation. Because of this heritage, MartinLogan continues to be the loudspeaker of choice for people who demand the most realistically rendered audio. Dedication to recreating sound in its truest form, using the most astonishing audio technology available, remains the personal passion of everyone in the MartinLogan family. Now, and forever.
Truth in Sound is the guiding philosophy of MartinLogan. Their mission is to use this unique and astonishing technology to render the most complex musical passages as faithfully to the original source as possible. If breathtaking, lifelike audio accuracy is important to you, you owe it to yourself to hear MartinLogan.
